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Personally - I got kinda the other feel. Seems like Z-Wave is slowly dying in favor of zigbee devices. I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And b

Personally - I got kinda the other feel. Seems like Z-Wave is slowly dying in favor of zigbee devices. I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And basically any device I might want (curtains, alarms, sensors, lights, motors, thermostats, etc) comes in a zigbee form. I agree that Z-Wave did the better standards enforcement, but Zigbee went with the age old route to success: manage to be cheaper. Throw in that the two most common automation situations tend to be either: 1. Upstream cloud service 2. Local management engine (ex: HomeAssistant, OpenHab, etc) And it just doesn't really matter all that much how compatible devices are in terms of point to point control. I can just route the message through HA and take the action I want - mixing and matching as needed. Plus - Alexa pro ships a directly integrated zigbee hub now, which got a lot of devices moving that direction, and Ikea makes some great super cheap zigbee devices. Bluetooth and Wifi devices are the worst of both worlds, in my opinion. Wifi usually needs integration with an upstream service which is a non-starter for me, and bluetooth is just really limited on total device count. Both also eat through a lot of power compared to z-wave/zigbee. It's pretty cool that several recent zigbee switches are completely battery/wire free. They literally use the energy you expend to push to the button to send the signal.

synergy20 4y ago
that's new to me, did not track this field for a few years. zigbee protocol was too complex in the past for me on resource restricted devices, while zwave is so much light-weight, then that's just the technical side. maybe that's why z-wave now opens up, it's forced to do so or it dies.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Zigbee was bigger in Europe, Z-Wave in the US. Or at least that was what I always read ;) Philips Hue was always the big "Zigbee? Never heard of that" Zigbee producer, nowadays, there are also good and cost-effective things from Sonoff and Aqara, and cheap but hit-or-miss devices by tuya (heavily white labeled)
bioemerl 4y ago
In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi stuff. Zwave is still strong in the commercial space ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use. I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big slow commercial entities that back it.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used it before home automation was really a thing back in college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong today. Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0 standard - https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-ecosystem/ https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-eco...) Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed-and-rated https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed...) Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4 different models include a zigbee hub: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigbee-support.html https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...) Wifi is basically a non-starter for any real automation since it takes a boat load of power, and requires a non-local server (at least without some serious work on your part). It's a great intro spot for consumers who want to try a color changing bulb they can control with their phone, since the initial buy in cost is lower with no hub - but it's not really the same. For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs. Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats on amazon right now. There are dozens of zigbee models. Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results. Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to return zigbee devices. Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices all the way down the page (one early result does both zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay down to see any overlap) Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee has radically shifted the market from where it was 3 years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave was the better pick).
  - bioemerl 4y ago
oceanplexian 4y ago
> I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And Even though you can find a Z-Wave bulb, it defeats the purpose of Z-Wave. Z-Wave isn't for consumables like bulbs, it works best for hard-wiring electrical devices into your home that will be permanently installed in a professional installation. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting a Zigbee switch in the wall since it's likely to become obsolete, whereas I'd be confident Z-Wave will still be around and supported in 10 or 15 years.

synergy20 4y ago

that's new to me, did not track this field for a few years. zigbee protocol was too complex in the past for me on resource restricted devices, while zwave is so much light-weight, then that's just the technical side. maybe that's why z-wave now opens up, it's forced to do so or it dies.

Semaphor 4y ago
Zigbee was bigger in Europe, Z-Wave in the US. Or at least that was what I always read ;) Philips Hue was always the big "Zigbee? Never heard of that" Zigbee producer, nowadays, there are also good and cost-effective things from Sonoff and Aqara, and cheap but hit-or-miss devices by tuya (heavily white labeled)

bioemerl 4y ago

In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi stuff. Zwave is still strong in the commercial space ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use. I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big slow commercial entities that back it.

horsawlarway 4y ago
I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used it before home automation was really a thing back in college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong today. Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0 standard - https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-ecosystem/ https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-eco...) Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed-and-rated https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed...) Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4 different models include a zigbee hub: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigbee-support.html https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...) Wifi is basically a non-starter for any real automation since it takes a boat load of power, and requires a non-local server (at least without some serious work on your part). It's a great intro spot for consumers who want to try a color changing bulb they can control with their phone, since the initial buy in cost is lower with no hub - but it's not really the same. For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs. Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats on amazon right now. There are dozens of zigbee models. Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results. Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to return zigbee devices. Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices all the way down the page (one early result does both zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay down to see any overlap) Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee has radically shifted the market from where it was 3 years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave was the better pick).
- bioemerl 4y ago

oceanplexian 4y ago

> I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And Even though you can find a Z-Wave bulb, it defeats the purpose of Z-Wave. Z-Wave isn't for consumables like bulbs, it works best for hard-wiring electrical devices into your home that will be permanently installed in a professional installation. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting a Zigbee switch in the wall since it's likely to become obsolete, whereas I'd be confident Z-Wave will still be around and supported in 10 or 15 years.